Olympos Dan Simmons

This novel is for Harold Bloom, who—in his refusal to collaborate in this Age of Resentment—has given me great pleasure.

How could Homer have known about these things? When all this happened he was a camel in Bactria!

—LUCIAN, The Dream

… the real-life history of the earth must in the last instance be a history of a really relentless warfare. Neither his fellows, nor his gods, nor his passions will leave a man alone.

—JOSEPH CONRAD, Notes on Life and Letters

O write no more the tale of Troy,

If earth Death’s scroll must be—

Nor mix with Laian rage the joy

Which dawns upon the free:

Although a subtler Sphinx renew

Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,

And to remoter time

Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,

The splendor of its prime;

And leave, if naught so bright may live,

All earth can take or Heaven can give.

—PERCY BLYTHE SHELLEY, Hellas